On Ease

ease (n.)
the absence of difficulty or effort

ease (v.)
to move carefully or gradually

I’ve been pondering my theme for the upcoming year lately, and I’ve just about settled on “Ease” for 2022. The dictionary definitions of ease are above, but my own definitions have a slightly different interpretation. Here’s what I want it to mean to me in 2022.

For starters, I want ease to mean abandoning the “guilt” in guilty pleasures. I want to experience what it feels like to let go of the feeling that I have to atone for my happiness or pay some sort of penance for living a life that feels good to me. The joy that exists in my life deserves to be here.

Ease also means learning how to accept the life that is unfolding right in front of me. I am a storyteller, and that means I often get caught up in the narratives and timelines of the story I tell myself about my own life, including what “should” be happening and when. Ease means embracing the story I find myself living in, appreciating the new parts that are unfolding each day. I learned somewhere along the way to tell myself the stories of where I “should” be; that means I can learn how to tell myself new stories.

I want to experience a life where alignment flows without struggle. I want this year of ease to mean not always having to force the puzzle pieces to fit. I want to work towards trusting what is meant to be to enter my life, at the right time to boot. Acceptance is not total passivity or abandoning my fate to chance, but rather trusting divine alignment. It’s the whole “leap and the net will appear” thing. Often, this requires an alarming (to me) level of comfort with letting go, but I am excited to see what happens when I simply allow my life to flow without needing to be in control all the goddamn time.

Within my writing life, ease looks like embracing the necessity of writing a pace that feels good to me. I live my creative life guided by a determination to not push the poems out by brute force; I’ve tried that method and it both “works” and doesn’t work for me. Part of my artistic commitment is to make art from a place of joy as often as I can, to let play motivate the direction my art takes, and not to suck all the fun out of writing by making it a chore for myself. If I can’t do that, sitting down heavily caffeinated and determined to “dominate” the page or “accomplish” the poem simply will not work for me.

In life more generally, I want ease to feel like not expending a crazy amount of energy to sail against the current, not needing to force my way. I wonder what might be possible with a pace that takes what comes as it comes. Setting aside the hustle and rush of life planning for simple acceptance of what is right now. Trusting divine timing and alignment to sort out the details. I want to believe that I can make my decisions from a place of peace, both with life itself and the way my life is unfolding.

I believe in black luxury but have different ideas about what it means, especially as I am situated in a materialistic culture & my life is not divorced from paid labor. Listen, I like nice handbags as much as the next girl, but I want to imagine a life of flow and ease for myself that is not defined by my relationship to labor. I work a job and that’s my current financial reality. However, I want ease to make up part of my mind-state so that I can approach even the necessary evils in my life with a sense of contentment, with, as my friend puts it, a strong sense of “all is well.”

I am excited about flowing into a new year and seeing how learning to relax into letting my life unfold will change me. I look forward to not having to earn my joy or feel like apologizing for living a life that feels good to me. All my life I’ve been striving to reach a life that feels good to live — what might it mean to simply let that life arrive?

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